A blog on the current crises in the Middle East and news accounts unpublished by the US press. Daily timeline of events in Iraq as collected from stories and dispatches in the French and Italian media: Le Monde (Paris), Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), La Repubblica (Rome), L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) and occasionally from El Mundo (Madrid).

Rome. Prodi against suspension of the Schengen Accords. Italian opposition leader Romano Prodi opposes suspension of Schenger Accords: The experience of London shows us that there are other solutions.

Paris. Radical imams under surveillance in France. French intelligence is monitoring a dozen radical imams in that country.

Washington. Congressional Republicans asked to codify the current detention policy for prisoners in Guantanamo

New York. UN freezes accounts of Saudi exile group. The UN has frozen the accounts of the Movement for the Reform of Islam in Saudi Arabia, headquartered in London.

Riyadh. The US embassy says it has information on "planned attacks" targeting US citizens in Saudi Arabia.

Jerusalem. The Israeli Knesset rejected several requests for delay of the Gaza pullout.

Khartoum. Condoleezza Rice says that time is running out for making preparations for the Israeli evacuation of Gaza.

Gaza. Seven people were killed in gunfire between Hamas and Fatah near the residences of Security Chief Rashid Abu Shbak and Fatah official Abdallah Franji.

Baghdad. The draft of the new Iraqi Constitution will be presented to Parliament in August, says Houmam Hammoudi, chairman of the drafting committee, saying that President Jalal Talabani and Premier Ibrahim Jaafari received an initial draft yesterday. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that the new Constitution will severly limit women's rights.

Mosul. A policeman was killed by gunmen

Baghdad. Iraqi government protests reports on deaths of civilians. Oxford Research Group and Iraq Body Count claim that more civilians have been killed by the Multinational Force than by the insurgency.

London. Blair says Iraq is not headed towards civil war. UK Prime MInster Tony Blair has rejected statesment that Iraq is headed for civil war during Question Time in the House of Commons. Jordanian Prince Hassan, the paternal uncle of King Abdallah II, told the BBC yesterday that "civil war has begun in Iraq."

Baghdad. Egyptian diplomat may still be alive. Egyptian telecommunications magnate Naguib Sawiris believes that Egyptian chargé d’affaires Ihab esh-Shérifmay still be alive. Cairo confirms that his body has never been found.

Arbil. The PKK is prepared to face the Turkish Army should it enter Iraq. PKK rebels are ready to transform northern Iraq into "hell on earth" should Turkey lauch a cross-border operation to defeat them. We have a certain degree of tolerance for the moment, but we cannot continue like this forever, said Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during an official visit to Mongolia. "We must put the PKK problem behind us", he continued. Erdogan believes that international law would authorize a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq as legitimate self-defense against the PKK.

Baghdad. At least eight recruits were killed and 26 wounded when a suicide bomber wearing a bomb vest entered a recruiting center in Mouthanna on Wednesday morning.

Samarra. An Iraqi solider was killed and four others wounded during clashes with insurgents.

Balad. One rebel was killed and two Iraqi soldiers were wounded.

Touz. A truck driver was killed and seven escorts were wounded when two bomb blasts targeted a convoy transporting supplies for the Iraqi Army.

Baiji. Three customers at a gas station were killed and two employees wounded when fights broke out over who was first at the pump.

Dour. An Iraqi businessman, Hadi Saad, 38, working for the US Army was kidnapped in front of his residence.

Moussayeb. Two insurgents suspected in last week's bombing which killed 83 and wounded 151 were killed and a third arrested.

Basrah. Hussein al-Daraji, a member of the Shi'ite Fadhila (Virtue) Party and assistant to the mayor, was shot dead by gunmen who entered his office.

15:18 London. The charges field on Tuesday against three British soldiers for war crimes is only the "tip of the iceberg, says a lawyer for the victims. Lord Goldsmith has said that eight other soliders, including a retired colonel, will face court-martial in the same affair. Donald Payne, 34, a corporal of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment is charged with the murder of Iraqi prisoner Baha Moussa, who died while in the custody of British forces in September 2003 in Basrah. Corporal Wayne Crowcroft, 21, and Soldier Second Class Darren Fallon, 22, both members of the First Batallion, Queen's Lancashire Regiment, are charged with prisoner abutse. General Geoffrey Sheldon of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment says the murder of ,Baha Moussa was a "tragic incident when never should have happened." Among the accused is Col. Jorge Mendonca, who intiated the inquest into the death of Moussa.

15:11 Baghdad. Arrest warrant for Mayor of Baghdad. Ala'a Al Timini is under arrest for adminsitrative corruption and financial fraud, says a report by Radio Nawa.

11:25 Baghdad. Three minutes of silence in the National Assembly commemorating the childrend killed last week in a bombing.

10:15 Baghdad. Sunnis quit committee drafting the Constitution. Four Sunnis have decided to quit the Constitutional Committee. A spokesman for the Sunni political movement, National Iraqi Dialog, says they will longer attend committee meetings.

08:41 Baghdad. Oil pipeline sabotaged north of Baghdad. Guerrillas attacked a pipeline supplying a power station north of Baghdad with mortar rounds.

Terrified passengers were evacuated from parts of London's transport system today after incidents involving explosives at three underground stations and a bus. The explosions were attempts to kill that had failed, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said tonight.

Two small blasts occurred on tube trains: one near Warren Street station in central London, and the other on a tube train near Oval station in south London.

A third small explosion was reported on a No 26 bus in Shoreditch, east London.

A suspect package was also found at Shepherd's Bush station in west London.

One woman was reportedly injured at Warren Street, but there were no reports of casualties during the other incidents, which happened shortly before 1pm.

I'll add that it is perfectly common for one big attack to be followed up by other smaller ones. If you don't believe me ask the IRA - they used that technique very often indeed in London to devastating effect.

It is very reasonable to suppose that terrorist groups study each others tactics and cheery pick what works.

It is way too early to say whether or not the perpetrators of this set of attacks were linked to the group who did the July 7th bombings. It is not too early to say that those behind today's attacks felt it was an example worth emulating.

LONDON (AP) - London's police chief said investigators were gathering forensic evidence Thursday that could offer a ``significant break'' in determining who carried out the latest attack on the transit system. Hours later, police announced two arrests in the case.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair did not give details of the evidence, but a terror expert said it could include DNA and fingerprints from explosive devices, as well as the origin of any detonators.

Blair said it was too early to determine whether the incidents were related to the July 7 attacks that killed 52 people and the four suspected suicide bombers two weeks ago.

``There is a resonance here, isn't there, I mean these are four attacks, there were four before,'' Blair told reporters. ``Whether or not this is directly connected in the sense of carried out by the same group of people, however loosely knit that is, I think that's going to take just a little bit longer.''

Police said there were no reports of bomb blast injuries Thursday. Later in the day, they said two arrests had been made in connection with the case.

One man was arrested near Downing Street, Prime Minister Tony Blair's residence, and the other, later released without charge, near Tottenham Court Road, which is close to the Warren Street Underground station where one of the incidents took place, police said.

London's police commissioner said police had sealed off the attack sites to look for clues. Authorities were no doubt already spooling through videotape from surveillance cameras that had provided critical information in determining the identities of the July 7 bombers.

``We do believe that this may represent - may represent - a significant breakthrough in the sense that there obviously is forensic material at these scenes that could be very helpful to us so I feel very positive about some of these developments,'' Blair said.

He also said he was not in a position to say whether the attacks were related to al-Qaida. The suspected July 7 bombers were all Muslims.

``I think it's too early to say anything like that - just too early,'' Blair said. ``But we can all see in front of us that the attacks have a similar pattern to the previous one.''

Paul Rogers, a terror expert at Bradford University, said investigators would have lots of forensic evidence to work on and that the attacks could point to the existence of another terrorist cell in Britain.

``They will have the devices and much can be done to them in terms of fingerprinting, DNA, the origin of the detonators and where the bags were bought,'' he said.

``The one ominous thing is that this appears to be a group of a similar nature to the previous July 7 bombers,'' Rogers said. ``It implies there might be another cell primed and ready to attack.''

The attacks of two weeks ago have been linked to Islamic extremists, and Blair appealed for people not to lash out against Muslims in general.

``No community should be smeared with responsibility for these matters,'' he said. ``These are criminal acts and we are in pursuit of a set of criminals in relation to it.''

London Mayor Ken Livingstone appealed for broad help from city residents for tips that could help in tracking down the culprits.

``In particular I'd like to ask those who will be leading religious services over the next few days to take their congregations through these events, the immorality of these events, and do everything in their power to convince people ... to come forward,'' he said.